So I made it to the farthest state from Florida in the mainland of the United States. I keep telling the students I meet how far I have come to travel to meet them. It's true. From Philly I must be about 2,500 miles and from South Florida, definitely over 3,000 if not 4,000. That is far!
Anyway, I made it into Olympia, Washington (another state capital!) and met with some folks at the Evergreen Freedom Foundation. There is a former ISI Honors Fellow working there, on Education Reform. We talked about each other's organizations and how we could work together, as both organizations fight for the ideas of liberty, one on campuses (ISI) and another in the public policy world (EFF).
I then met with two student leaders for dinner - one leads an ISI Group at the Evergreen State College (a very very Leftist school) and other leads a College Republicans group at St. Martin's University. Both are in the Olympia area. After dinner, I was a "guest speaker" at the College Republicans meeting at St. Martin's University. About 7 students in total were there and they all signed up for ISI of course. I also helped establish some good relations with the two student leaders, so hopefully they will see some ISI Lectures on their campuses in the near future.
Meredith, the student leader at Evergreen State College is now graduated but she is helping to make sure the other student leaders that are still there running the conservative groups are staying well-connected with ISI and keeping up the good work she has done. That is the hardest thing about being a campus leader - making sure that the students following you keep up the good work you have done. Props to her!
After the meetings, it was about 8:45pm, another long day... and I still had about a 50 minute drive ahead of me to my hotel in Seattle. I got in here about 9:45pm and I'm ready to just relax now... my first meeting with some new ISI faculty members and some well-established ISI Faculty Associates here at several schools in the Seattle area begins tomorrow at 11am.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment